Norwegian Cruise Line
Norwegian Star Cruise Review
Mexican Riveria

Richard and Phyllis Kay

My wife and I have literally cruised all over the world from freighters to Vista class ships. The past five years our family of six has been cruising the Mexican Riveria (because of vacation time available for our fourteen year old granddaughter.) Our children had never been to Acapulco or Xtapa, and we purposely booked an eight day cruise (Dec. 19.05) on NCL's
Norwegian Star) going to the new ports.

Practically the only difference in a negative review by a Newitt Bradley who booked the Dec/ 3/05 cruise was that passengers waiting in line to board for an hour and a half were notified in line of the change due to mechanical difficulties by a flyer passed out by attendants. Upon our return I immediately wrote the President of NCL enumerating the problems. To date the only answer I have received is a standard printed post card sent on Dec. 4,2006 that my letter was received and they were looking into it. It is now January 27, 2006 and I have received no further correspondence. However, my son did in-form me that he received a letter from an attorney regarding a class action suit" that has evidentially been filed against NCL. It is hard for me to believe that NCL changed the itinerary because the mechanical difficulties limited the cruising ability to no more than 20 knots. However, we have pictures (taken from the cabin TV that on several occasions the ship was cruising faster than 2; knots. It was the opinion of the majority of th e passengers that since Acapulco was an additional six hundred miles the fuel costs would cut into the huge profit NCL recently released in a Jan. news item. We always book a handicapped room due to my needing the use of an electric scooter - and are used to a large room with a great deal of closet and drawer space (as we are used to on the HAL's Ryndam) Instead we were in a cabin barely large enough to accommodate my scooter. One small closet, and three small drawers in a desk to accommodate our belongings. Mr. Bradley (not in a handi-capped also commented on the small accommodations. The first full day of sailing, the reception area was crowded with passengers complaining about the change in itinerary, and other problems prevalent aboard. Example: our cabin was not cleaned until my wife notified housekeeping. The only good service was - room service which came promptly when called - that is when we could get the telephone to work properly. Mr. Bradley, upon receiving his bar bill asked the bartender about the 15% gratuity automatically put on the bill. He was in-formed that the crew DID NOT of the automatic gratuities placed on our final bill. On two occasions we took our party of six to the cover charge restaurants, because the food in the "no charge" restaurants we liter-ally inedible. In addition to the cover charge if you wished a surf bad turf you were charged an ADDITIONAL $25.00. The standard joke among the passengers was what you didn't eat at dinner the night before you gotten some inedible form the next day for lunch. Our travel agent always send a bottle of wine to our cabin (never received.)

Since we usually book well in advance to make certain we get a handicapped cabin = we received no cabin upgrade - but my agent always makes certain we receive a $50.00 gift credit for each cabin - am item listed on our ticket, but when my wife complained to the reception desk we were told that the $50.00 was a gift from our travel agent. Adding insult to injury NCL magnanimously gave each cabin $100.00 credit for the change in itinerary. This is really an insult after reading of the "mutiny of the passengers on the Queen Mary 2" They received full reimbursement of their tickets AND airfare. A major problem aboard was lack of communication between passengers and crew. An example of not being able to understand them was the fact that my fourteen year old granddaughter ordered a virgin margarita - and was served a drink with alcohol in it. I have just torched on the major points that made our cruise a grave dis-appointment but I will end with a closing statement by Mr. Bradley which stated that his first cruise would be his LAST on NCL. Our family definitely concurs - in fact our travel agent is already working on our nest cruise (fifteen days to Hawaii) which will NOT be with NCL. Closing on a bit of humor. When we were moored in Cabo - the Ryndan was moored next to us. The consensus of our family's opinion we should don water wings - get our luggage - and swim over to the Ryndam to enjoy the rest of the voyage.